David Broome, a co-creator of The Biggest Loser, says in the docuseries that he got the idea for the show after seeing a desperate “help wanted” ad for a personal trainer to “save my life” on a bulletin board outside of a gym. Once the show was underway, producers searched for similarly desperate contestants.

The Biggest Loser was famous for how much weight contestants lost… and infamous for how it belittled and abused contestants. “Producers… were like, ‘We want ’em to puke, we want the madness of it all!